


Burial at sea

by Kangoo



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Kael'thas Centric, M/M, also, this is an aborted au about pirate!kael and his fish bf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 03:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12808494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: Captain Garithos tells him he’ll be dead by daylight, so Kael'thas sneaks out in the middle of the night with the barge they use when they can’t reach the shore with the ship.





	Burial at sea

**Author's Note:**

> proofreading is for the WEAK

 Captain Garithos tells him he’ll be dead by daylight, so Kael'thas sneaks out in the middle of the night with the barge they use when they can’t reach the shore with the ship.

 

(The only light then is that of the full moon above and the fire reflected on the waves. When he looks back — _one last time_ , he tells himself — the Quel'thalas is slowly sinking into the depths, a burning wreck more like a funeral pyre than a ship.)

 

They’re in the middle of nowhere, with no land in sight and only the full moon’s light to see where he’s going; which, as far as Kael'thas is concerned, is nowhere except ‘far away from here’. He will probably die at large, with no water and no food, but at least he’ll die on his own terms.

 

 

Kael'thas rows for what feels like hours, to the point of exhaustion and then beyond, but when he finally collapses the only things that’s changed is that he can’t see the burning wreck of his ship anymore.

 

(Not his, not really — his father’s, but his father burned with the ship, and can a shipwreck really belongs to anyone but those who drowned with it?)

 

He lays on his back, panting and aching, looking at the stars until the world stops spinning, and then because they’re the only thing worth looking at around there. Kael'thas is a scholar, not a sailor: he’s weak, he gets seasick easily and he despises fish. Of course his first travel by ship would also be his last: that’s how averse to ships he is.

 

He wishes things could have gone differently, but nothing can prevent pirates.

 

Waves lick his fingertips as his left hand hangs limply out of the barge. The water is close to freezing. He’d just have to roll to the side, let himself fall under— it’d be a quick death. He’d drown without realizing it, numb and half-asleep because of the cold, or maybe something would swim from the abyss to eat an easy meal, and then he’d be gone in a flash of teeth. It’d be almost painless.

 

His boat gently rocks in the current and Kael'thas frowns. The water almost feels warmer under his fingers — no, it _is._

 

He painfully lifts himself on his elbows and dips his other hand in the water. It’s starting to feel outright _hot_ , now, and Kael'thas thinks: _that’s it. I’ve lost my mind already_.

 

And then the darkness fills with a distant, green glow, and he thinks, _that might be even worse_.

 

(Kael'thas has been raised among sailors — he knows the tales. Green lights and half-human bodies, coming out of the depths under the full moon to scavenge shipwreck like abyssal carrion birds. He never believed them, but there is a first time for everything and what’s one more on this night?)

 

He starts to see shapes underwater, shadows cut like humans and moving like gigantic fish. A dark, shredded fin brushes the surface, inches from his still-submerged hand, and Kael'thas throws himself backward. His sudden movement rocks the boat harder but the only panic he feels is turned toward the _things_ circling the barge like a monstrous school of sharks. He thinks he hears nails scrapping against the bottom of the boat and he freezes in fear, wide eyes strained forward.

 

The air smells like salt and sulfur.

 

The glow is stronger now, surrounding his small embarkation and drowning the moonlight that, just before, was making the sea silver.

 

(They don’t sing. Those are not that kind of sea creatures. He wishes they were.)

 

Thing is: Kael'thas is as much an idiot as he is a sailor. He knows no one has ever seen one of those things and lived to tell the tale — the stories are always second-hand from far-away, half-drunk sightings, because whoever looks into the abyss gets dragged into it in return.

 

But Kael'thas is going to die either way: he has nothing to lost — apart from his soul, perhaps.

 

He moves slowly so as to keep the boat as still as possible and, hands leaning at the edge of it, he looks _down_.

 

The sea glows a dark, eerie green, and two shining eyes meet his under the surface.

 

Kael'thas once again throws himself backward, heart hammering in his chest, but his hands stay where they are. There is definitely _something_ there.

 

Again, he bends forward and looks into the water. The eyes are still there, watching him — in the dark, he can just barely make out the lines of an almost-human face. And then he notices other eyes, blinking open next to the first pair as more creatures approach. They are the only thing he can see, that and glimpses of glowing lines somewhere where he thinks their bodies are — bio-luminescent markings, maybe?

 

The creatures don’t make a move to jump at him or anything like that. They just _stare_. But so does he, so fair is fair.

 

And then, as suddenly as they came, they disperse. The light remains but it dims ever-so-slightly, as if they had been spooked by something and had dived deeper. And what, he wonders, could scare off such things?

 

A bigger specimen of said things, apparently.

 

He doesn’t notice it at first, because the glow is already everywhere and his eyes can’t quite discern whether it’s brighter or not at this point. It’s just— there, weird and otherworldly. But then he sees the movement, a shadow that obscures some of the light and casts some itself, and at first glance it’s _at least_ eight foot long, it’s the kind of shadows that eats sharks for breakfast.

 

Kael'thas is a quick study, though. He’s already learned not to fear death in the last hour, so he stays exactly where he is and watches it circle around his boat. He _does_ , however,  leans back when two hands emerges and take hold next to his — the creature has webbed, clawed fingers, he notices distantly as the aforementioned claws digs into the wood of his barge.

 

And then the boat _dips_ , and he scrambles backward (to get away or avoid falling off he’s not sure) as the thing hoists itself out of the water.

 

It is, Kael'thas notices, more human than he expected it to be. There are many differences, of course: its skin is a deep purple, eyes burning green in their sockets, with gills on the side of its neck and long, pointed ears, but its face is rathersimilar to Kael'thas’s and it even has hair, like an inky-black curtain falling over its muscular shoulders. Its chest is covered in scars and glowing, tattoo-like marks.

 

It is, also, most probably male and kind of attractive in a very strange way, and Kael'thas kind of wants to drown himself at the thought. _This is not the time for your weird tastes_ , he tells himself and very carefully doesn’t move an inch.

 

The creature settles at the edge of the boat, arms crossed over the border and his head resting on them, without ever moving its (his?) eyes from Kael'thas’s face. Kael'thas notes the fin on his back, the skin connecting his arms to his sides like weird wings or, maybe, _really_ weird flippers, and also the incredible sharpness of his teeth when he notices Kael'thas looking at him. Kael'thas looks away quickly.

 

He doesn’t speak, only stares from between heavy strands of black hair. Kael'thas wants to fidget but he stays very, very still and keeps his gaze somewhere around the creature’s forehead, because he’s not rude but he’s not really eager to maintain eye contact either.

 

Whatever the thing sees must satisfy him, because he huffs in a somewhat-approving manner and dives back underwater. Kael'thas waits for his pulse to calm and then moves back to the edge to look down, where the light has yet todisappear.

 

The creature is looking at him. Slowly, deliberately, it smiles. There are claw marks on the wood; Kael'thas feels them under his fingers, digging shards into his skin.

 

“Oh, and why not?” He says out loud, mostly to himself but a little to the thing waiting for him too, and then he lets himself falls forward.

 

* * *

 

 

Kael'thas wakes up as sunlight warms his back. He’s sprawled on a beach, with waves coming up his legs with the rising tide. There’s sand absolutely everywhere, from his mouth to the inside of his drenched boots, and everything tastes like seawater and copper — blood, and when he licks his lips he feels a cut crossing them. It already healed into a clean scar, however.

 

He staggers to his feet. He is discovering places in his body that he didn’t know existed, let alone could hurt, and has the singular impression that he drowned for a lot more time than is recommendable for someone who enjoys breathing air to survive.

 

All he remembers are arms holding him and the taste of brimstone and ashes on his tongue. He doesn’t dwell on it.

 

Alive and more surprised than elated about it, Kael'thas shakes the worst of the sand off and swears on his life he’ll never get on a ship again.

 

(Do you know what they say about the creatures under the sea? Oh, they say many things, sure. They say they are cursed, they say they guard the surface from the demons of the abyss and feeds on the souls of mortals, that they’re guardians or monsters or beasts, the tales are never certain.

 

Here’s something that never changes: they say making a deal with them is selling your soul, and that they always come to collect.

 

Kael'thas knows he’ll find his way back to them one day, back to the sea and the darkness of the uncaring ocean. He knows it like he knows his own name, like it’s written in his ribs, above his heart, burned there by two lips on his own and words in a language he doesn’t know but understand anyway, whispered against his ear. Kael'thas knows it like he knows that, when the time comes, he’ll drowns willingly, and then he’ll become one of them.

 

It’s a brighter future than he had last morning.)


End file.
